Der Fuehrerbefehl

 Many of you will be too young to remember the infamous events of 1962. They led to famine and public disorder; to mobs of crazed people jostling in the streets as they struggled in the queues to register for their unemployment benefit and for hand-outs of public foodstuffs. Gaunt and famished, in country after country the hungry men, driven to despair, protested in the only way they knew. The barricades ... the street massacres ...

The cruel decree Veterum Sapientia had ordered the sacking of thousands of men, and some women, from Catholic seminaries throughout the world. Papa Roncalli, "Good Pope John XXIII" as he had ironically been called, in full consciousness of His authority, Decreed and Commanded eight important rules. Rule 5 ordered that the major sacred sciences should be taught in Latin, that the professors of these sciences in universities or seminaries be required to speak Latin and to make use of textbooks written in Latin. "Those whose ignorance of Latin makes it difficult for them to obey these instructions shall be gradually replaced by professors who are suited for this task. Any difficulties which may be advanced by students or professors must be overcome ..."

Hence the world-wide sackings. The Pope had spoken. Petrus locutus est.

Fiat Latinitas, ruat caelum.

S John XXIII ended with the impressive words "In virtue of our Apostolic Authority, We will and command that all the decisions, decrees, proclamations and recommendations of this Our Constitution remain firmly established and ratified, "anything to the contrary notwithstanding, even things worthy of special note". Gosh!! Nobody would disregard something as definite as that, would they?

What a persecution was then unleashed! Spies and informers abounded; Gestapo-like bands of thugs went around seminaries collecting evidence and listing names. Unspeakable cruelties were perpetrated upon these hungry, workless, men; upon their unfed women and their emaciated catamites. Since the elimination by burning of the Cathars, nothing like it had been seen in the Catholic Church.

In Argentina, no bishop was more rigorous than Bishop Bergoglio in enforcing the decrees of S John XXIII. If ever he heard of a seminary professor giving a single lecture in Spanish rather than Latin, he was instantly on the phone demanding that the man be sacked. He had the reputation of being the strictest bishop in Latin America in implementing Veterum Sapientia.

Of course, the relentless pressure of the Bishops and of the Seminary Management Boards proved ... as they  must ... successful. Vernacular teaching totally disappeared from our seminaries; and as the succeeding Popes enforced the same rules, even the memory of Vernacular Seminary Teaching has disappeared. The world feels, somehow, so much cleaner, so much safer.

And how right all this has been. Veterum Sapientia was an Apostolic Constitution, signed, for greater emphasis, on the High Altar of S Peter's. Catholic clergy and Laity know their duty of submission to the authority of the Roman Pontiff. When we hear the Pope's voice, it is S Peter that we hear. This knowledge calls us to unquestioning obedience. "Do all your seminary teaching in Latin", he cries. Our response is "Certainly, Holy Father. Pronto!!".

Our privilege today, in 2021, is that we are being given a very similar opportunity for total and unthinking obedience, Jesuit style. Pope Francis possesses precisely and exactly the same authority as S John XXIII. When he decrees the extermination of the Old Mass, that decree comes to us with precisely and exactly the same force as the requirement of S John XXIII that all Priestly Formation in seminaries should be done entirely in Latin ... er ... except that possibly a motu proprio may not have ...um ... quite the authority of an Apostolic Constitution ... er ... . I wouldn't know about that sort of thing; I'm only a 'convert'.

Just suppose that 1962 decree had been ignored! Just suppose that the Rectors and the Episcopal Boards running seminaries had taken not the slightest bit of notice of those Decrees of S John XXIII!

It just doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

Traditionis Custodes

From a private letter to me from Prebendary Michael Moreton (7 November 2001);

"I regard the Roman canon as part of the complex of traditions which characterised the life of the Church as it emerged from the centuries of persecution: a shared rule of faith in the creeds, a shared rule of what constituted Scripture, a shared rule of holy order, and a shared rule of prayer. I do not believe that any part of the Church in later centuries has any authority to alter these canons."

From Cardinal Ratzinger:

"Rites ... are forms of the apostolic Tradition and of its unfolding in the great places of the Tradition. ... After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters ... the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."

So much, then for Bergoglianist autocracy. In passing on, we can applaud the insight and determination of the Moscow Patriarchate in resisting papist ambitions in the See of Constantinople.

But if the hyperuebersuperultrapapalism of Bergoglianity will not serve God's People, what will? Conciliarism? You just have to be joking. After the fiasco of Vatican II (yes; genuine, valid, canonical Ecumenical Councils can be disasters for the Church, as both S John Henry Newman and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had no trouble discerning)? And, on the other side of the fence, how about the megafiasco of the 'Great and Holy Council' a few years ago in Crete? 'Nuff Said!

HOLY TRADITION.

Holy Tradition, which, of course, has Holy Scripture as one of its ruling structures.

Holy Tradition, the foremost manifestation of which, day by day, is in the Liturgy.

Holy Tradition is our truest Mistress.

Holy Tradition is the ultimate and over-ruling auctoritas in the life of the Household of God. 

No auctoritas can subsist in enactments which manifestly subvert Holy Tradition.

Is your bishop eschatological?

A Greek (phrourein) verb and a Latin (excubare) verb are found in early literature describing the duties of a Bishop. Excubare literally means 'to sleep out of doors'. These terms point to your bishop's duty to be a  guard, a watchman. Not for him ... metaphorically ... the comfort of a soft mattress and a downy pillow; not for him to enjoy unbroken slumbers until his alarm-clock rouses him at 6.00 for his Office, Meditation, and Mass.

His duty is that of the Watchman, on the ramparts of the Holy City, his eyes keen to spot an approaching Enemy. Ideally, he is a Cerberus whose bite is every bit as bad as his bark, ready to savage those who attempt illicit entry into his Household. Or he climbs comscientiously up the high city tower from which his keen eye can detect hostile movement even on a distant horizon. 

And don't forget another Greek verb, gregorein, a rather late, perhaps koine coinage from egeirein, meaning to Stay Awake. Have you noticed how often the Gospels offered for Confessor Bishops emphasise the episcopal duty to watch, vigilare? "Watch, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. ... if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up ... " "he commanded the doorkeeper (thuroros) to watch ..."

And the Lord's teaching is that the Coming of the Judge upon that Day will be like that of a Lord or a King coming unexpectedly to make a reckoning with his household officers.

Your Bishop's job, before everything else, is to keep you safe by Watching and Guarding, so that on the Day of the Lord he can present you, with all his Household, pure and undefiled, to the Judge. 

Does your Bishop understand this? Does he do these things? When a Wolf starts sniffing around the sheepfold, is your bishop out there to confront him, brave, resolute, and fearless?

When yet another Satanic assault upon the Faith wafts across the airwaves from the Seven Hills, is your bishop out there in front, valiant for the Faith handed down through the Apostles, for the Depositum Fidei, insistent that, if Peter carelessly misspoke, he should clear away the confusion; that if the Vicar of Christ himself has actually fallen short of the Faith, he should purge himself of his Hypocrisy (synhypocrithesan ... tei hypocrisei are S Paul's words in Galatians).

Is your Bishop careful to keep his nose and his copy-book clean, or does he bear the marks of a man who is haunted by the thought that he does not know whether his Lord will come at Midnight, or in the Third Watch?

Urban Myths and the Amazon Synod

Any English reader will be able to name a village ... some village, somewhere ... in which property prices are well above the incomes of that same rural peasantry which occupied the properties in yesteryear. Because these properties have been bought up as retirement homes, or holiday homes, by the upper middle classes. When a man has spent his working life in a city office, commuting daily from a dormitory suburb by means of a transport system bursting at the seams, his retirement fantasy is a (carefully renovated) country cottage, with hollyhocks crowding suggestively around the door.

An idealised and imagined rural idyll is a direct product of, and reaction to, Urbanisation.

It was ever thus. Theocritus initiated a tradition of European 'Pastoral Poetry' as he read in the great Library at Alexandria, one of the megalopoleis of the ancient world. While he sought the lucrative favour of Ptolemy II, he imagined a world of rural simplicity in which shepherds or cowherds held poetic competitions while their complaisant flocks or herds nibbled beautifully but unobtrusively. In this genre, the main problem was that shepherdesses often had tangled hair; but that mattered little as long as the shepherd could imagine himself exquisitely caught within her tangles. Vergil may have been libidinis in pueros pronioris, but, in the world of his Eclogues, a shepherdess or two running provocatively to hide behind the willow trees never came amiss. And that same Vergil, city educated, was among the court propagandists jockying for position and rewards in the cut-throat culture of newly 'imperial' Rome. Wall-paintings recovered at Pompei remind us that such mythical landscapes came right into the living quarters of the urban elite.

Already Horace (Epode II) had seen through this Urban Myth; but I doubt whether Marie Antoinette and her ladies read the Epodes as they tended their lambs at the Petit Trianon.

Trianon-time is back with a vengeance. The Pastoralist Community had never been quite sure where their 'True Countryside' was to be found; they just knew it had to be far distant from the tower-blocks and the filthy crowded streets of the metropolis. Might it be in Arcadia? Sicily? Shropshire? Versailles? ... but now the secret is out! Amazonia!! Amaryllis of the tangled hair, clutching her milking-stool, has decamped to the Amazon! At long last, Jorge I'm-the-Magisterium Bergoglio and his 'Spirit'-filled entourage have pinned it down! Amazonia is where the most mega-Trianon of all time is waiting to be built! Amazonia is where Rousseau's Savage really is still authentically Noble, happily unencumbered with either the felix culpa or the talis et tantus Redemptor!

Go there (by rowing boat, of course; little Swedish Greta Wozname will crew for you). Take your camera and get shots of Kasper herding his heiffers and of Marx playing with his syrinx. Your own face could even appear in a selfie together with Hans Kueng being pelted with apples by lascivious (but guaranteed indigenous) nymphs!

As Gerhard Cardinal Mueller has observed, "It is certainly beautiful to be beside by the Rhine and to dream of the Amazon"! How often that irritating man does get things exactly right!! No wonder he had to be sacked!!! What a good job PF has done in shutting him up!!!!

Signum magnum ...

Tuesday's celebration of the Miraculous Medal ... and the very tasty Mass formula, with its allusions to the Johannine theology of the semeia ['Signs'] of the Lord ... inspired me to ask our Supplex Omnipotentia, our blessed Lady of Cana, for a Sign to strengthen the afflicted Church of which she is herself such a beautiful and powerful Sign.

I must confess that when I opened my computer on Wednesday morning I felt that my prayer had been answered. Lifesitenews provided the reactions of orthodox prelates to the current homosexualist furore. I have to single out the magnificent disdain of the magnificent Cardinal Mueller ("... effusions of an academic nobody..."); in the next pontificate, whatever role that man has, he must surely be involved in cleaning out the Augean Stables which PF has chosen ... such a strange predilection ... to inhabit.

And my eye was particularly caught by the piece from Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Two points.

(1) He situates the homosexualist onslaught in terms of  heresy. I think this is massively important. We should not let the machinations of a very nasty lobby obscure the fact that many people with a same-sex orientation live lives of heroic sanctity. By grace they triumph over temptation and are an example to ... to take just one example ... those heterosexuals who unchastely corrupt the marital act.

The current movement among some sick members of the Church to validate homosexual genital activity is far more evil in its conceptual roots than it is in particular disordered physical actions which, after all, are after repentance mercifully absolved. It is heretical because it overthrows the Natural Order and thus attempts to set individual autonomy above the Sovereign Rights of our Creator and Redeemer. Obvious stuff. Forgive me for labouring what readers will already know very well. Some of you will recall Archbishop Lefebvre's great cry They have uncrowned Him.

(2) Bishop Schneider writes "We have to notice an eclipse in the Papal exercise of this very task of strengthening the truth regarding homosexuality". Observe the words eclipse in the papal exercise ... . This is highly reminiscent of the phrase of Blessed John Henry Newman suspense of the function of the Ecclesia Docens. He used it in his analysis of the Arian Controversy, when most of the episcopate, including Pope Liberius, ceased to exercise their function of using their Teaching Authority. When complaints were made to Rome about his words, our great English Blessed made clear that he was not suggesting popes or bishops had lost their Magisterial authority, but observing, as a matter of historical fact, that for forty or more years they had chosen not to exercise it. Rome, wisely, did not intervene against him!

This is very close to where we are now. As Bishop Schneider is pointing out. No wonder they want to stop him travelling. Long live his airmiles!

And I liked Fr Fessio's suggestion that PhD means Philosophische Dumheit. These people need to be laughed at.


Exhilarating, Yes? A battle worth joining in, Yes? Nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus, Yes?

Comments ... and Can The Pope Cancel Summorum Pontificum?

Back now at my computer, I have looked through the Comments and enabled most of them. I gave thumbs-down to one or two which seemed to me to tip over the boundary between reasoned criticism of the current regime in Rome into mere abuse of our Holy Father.

I see that the fear has again surfaced that PF might cancel Summorum Pontificum. I think about five years ago I wrote a piece on this which I delivered to one or two groups, including one meeting in the Brompton Oratory. Since my 'Documents' section has a press-ready copy of it, I may have given it to some journal to print. If anyone can tell me where I have delivered it or where it may have appeared in print, I would be grateful.

My point was that this is a theological question and not primarily canonical; and that it would be ultra vires for any pope to claim to suppress SP.

Pretty obvious, really.

Due Process and Natural Justice and Facing People

It is not easy to know what to make of the precipitous removal by PF of an American bishop called Holley.

For nearly two millennia, Roman pontiffs have intervened to remove dysfunctional bishops. This was happening even before the Catholic Church had such a thing as Canon Law. And one can understand why, given the present atmosphere, it might be necessary for a Universal Primacy to act quickly in an emergency. And readers will remember the many depositions by Pope Hildebrand of simoniacal bishops. So, on balance, I think I feel that the presumption must tilt in favour of the Holy See. But ...

But the situation is profoundly unsatisfactory. In CATHOLIC ECCLESIOLOGY, the main ministerial realities are, firstly, the Petrine See, the universal source and instrument of Unity, which presides over the agape of the Universal Church. And, secondly, the local Bishop, Successor of the Apostles, is the minister who presides over the unity and orthodoxy of his local Church which is, let us never forget, the Catholic Church in that place. As Leo XIII taught, and Vatican II repeated, diocesan bishops are not mere Vicars of the Pope, like the regional managers of a supermarket chain. The deposition of bishops ought to be a matter of enormous rarity, as being a very unusual (if occasionally unavoidable) disruption of the natural order and sacramental structure of Christ's Church Militant.

We do now have Canon Law; and it is difficult to understand why such removals should not be done with a due process, rather than by means of 'phone calls to and from Nuncios. It is reported that Bishop Holley was asked to resign so that, in accordance with Canon 185, he could be granted the title emeritus. This suggests that he was not suspected of an ecclesiastical offence.

And our world is one in which NATURAL JUSTICE is deemed proper. I must declare an interest here. I became even more convinced of this when I was told, the day before being received into Full Communion, that two English Catholic bishops had refused to give me a positive votum and that my scheduled admission to the presbyterate of the Ordinariate had therefore been put on hold. Verbally, it was made clear to me that this related to my preference for the Vetus Ordo; but I was never given any formal explanations in writing or a meeting with those concerned so that they could tell me face to face what the problem was and hear my own account of myself.

It was a very unpleasant business and I do not wish to relive it. My point is that the Christ's Church should be a transparent place in which affairs are transacted in visibly just ways.

It should never be possible for somebody to feel, or other people to suspect, that personal prejudice, individual liturgical preferences, or the operation of old-boy networks, were operating to the disadvantage of any laic or cleric or bishop.

Otherwise, we have that 'Arbitrary Power' which we Anglo-Saxons have for centuries claimed to mistrust.

Finally: the habitual REFUSAL BY PF TO MEET PERSONALLY AND PHYSICALLY bishops whom he is deposing is arguably unChristian as well as unmanly; not to say, plain cowardly. He may be a dab hand at ladling repetitive abuse down public microphones, but he is very shy about seeing people ... even four of his Cardinals when they asked for an audience! This is not one of the least of the scandals of this pontificate. For me personally, it was his treatment of the late Bishop Livieres at the beginning of this pontificate which first made me seriously uneasy about what sort of person had obtained possession of the Roman See.

Readers will remember the adamant refusal in audientia by Archbishop Errington to resign when Pius IX asked for his resignation, couching this as a request for a personal favour. A century and a half later, we are, apparently, suffering a more tyrannical and arbitrary regime than ever has been attributed to Pio Nono.

Deathgate

I can't see much point in making substantive comments on the "changes made to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) on the death penalty" until the new text is published. All I can so far find on the Internet are some vernacular versions. .

This, in itself, I object to. The world has been given the impression that the Catholic Church has changed its teaching when nobody has the wherewithal to judge whether or not this is true. I can only call this sort of behaviour in  matters of faith and morals disgracefully frivolous. Can it be that PF wants to make an immediate impression on world opinion without giving theological professionals the prior opportunity to weaken by their analyses that impact?

More importantly: the English version says that the death penalty is "inadmissible". I have not the faintest idea what this curious term means theologically or canonically. If the actual text, when published, turns out to contain the phrase "intrinsece malum" then, frankly, we do have quite a problem on our hands. But Cardinal Ladaria is no fool. I shall be very surprised if those words are used. I'd put money on this!

Personally, like PF, I view the death penalty with considerable personal abhorrence ... anywhere, for any reason, at any time. I applaud attempts to discourage its use. I am less certain that the pages of a theological compendium such as the CCC are the right place to wage such a (very worthy) political campaign.

Furthermore, this move appears to take no account of  'advances' in Moral theology since and consequent upon Amoris laetitia. That document appeared to leave it to local hierarchies to make decisions for their own countries. But in the case of Deathgate, it appears that PF's wishes are of peremptory universal application. Perhaps the genial Graf von Schoenborn, or the sinister and brooding Fr Rosica, could explain to us, carefully and precisely, what the difference is. At the same time, it would be good to have an answer to the following: Adultery, while (yes?) generally wrong, may apparently, according to Amoris Laetitia, be Fair Enough in some circumstances. But PF's initiative concerning the death penalty apparently admits no exceptions. Why? And if it does tacitly admit exceptions, are we not left in the same poition as we were in with the earlier formula S John Paul had put into the CCC?

Then there is the problem of the Marx which did not bark during the night. Two or three years ago, with regard to Communion for divorcees, Cardinal Marx asserted the autonomy of the 'German Church' with the fearless and ringing words "We are not subsidiaries of Rome". I have not yet seen a similarly brave assertion that, also in this matter of the death penalty, Germany is Not a Subsidiary of Rome.

.............................................................................................

May I also be personal?

The CCC was made the doctrinal standard of the Ordinariates. I know I will be reminded that any Catholic, in an Ordinariate or anywhere else, is bound to what the Magisterium will authentically teach as well as to what it has taught and is teaching. I agree, absolutely. But, nevertheless, such an arbitrary change in a documentary henotikon, in which X has metamorphosed into not-X in a very few years, and without (as far as we know) a detailed collegial consultation with the whole College of Bishops (such as Pius XII conducted before defining the Assumption), leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth. It is because I have been driven to the unhappy conclusion that the present pontificate is manipulative and dishonest, that I wonder if this change in the CCC may be preparing the way for some of Senor Bergoglio's other private opinions and personal convictions to be given spurious Magisterial colouring.

Such apprehensions are, regrettably, difficult not to entertain at a time when the ultrapapalist perversion of the Petrine Ministry which Cardinal Ratzinger once so vigorously refuted, and which was condemned in advance by the lapidary phraseology in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I (and see Denziger paras 3114-3117), appears to be the currently dominant ideology within the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

Like getting blood out of a stone

Who would have thought that there would be yet another complete paragraph in that letter of Pope emeritus Benedict which Mgr Vigano tried to conceal. A paragraph revealing that Ratzinger, happily, has not become mentally soft and helpless in old age; that he doesn't quite see why he should be kicked around by sniggering enemies, even though he is no longer pope. [Settimo Cielo blog]

He is astonished that he was expected to provide a polite puff for (among others) a theologian who was a noisy and persistent anti-papal nuisance during the last two pontificates.

As well he might be.

I know little about other countries and their political and cultural standards and how they operate. I do know that my own country is far from perfect and that its public life is frequently degraded by people who will get away with whatever they can until they are found out. Sexually, financially ... you name it. But ...

But in my country, an episode like this would, beyond any possibility of doubt, have ended up with a resignation or sacking in a context of public disgrace. Will any of my fellow-countrymen contradict me in my assertion?

Perhaps that will indeed be how this episode will end up. We shall see.

If this man Vigano were to be kept in office, it would be the final detail in the unfolding public demonstration of the moral corruption right at the heart of this failed pontificate. In politics, it is often not the big issues that bring a crisis to its head, but something that starts off by being insignificant to the point of pettiness. During this Bergoglian era, the two major disasters have been the shiftiness, accompanied by unbecoming bluster, in the area of paedophilia and coverups and cronyism; and attempts to get away with perverting the Church's moral teaching by stealth. Those things matter infinitely more than the current silly and minor episode.

But 'Lettergate' provides such a vivid snapshot of dirty little men involved in dirty little plots for thoroughly dirty purposes. Even anti-Ratzinger veterans among the Commentariat like Robert Mickens are saying that Vigano should resign or be sacked.

If PF cannot be made to understand the need to clean out his own Augean Stables, surely he should be made to go. Not next week, but this week.